Time out from *moral* dilemmas, scruples, & all that stuff.  Simple matter
of approach to life here:

You are occasionally on another system, but haven't been for quite a while
(and never actually interact with anyone while you're on it).  Suddenly, you
receive mail from a user on that system saying:

> Hello!
> 
> I saw you on and I thought I'd mail you.
> 
> How are you and how are you doing?
> 
> 
> Please mail me in reply.
>

Neither the login nor the full name sound in the least familiar.

Do you reply?  If so, what do you say?

23 responses total.

 I got the same letter last nite. I told him that it was not appropriate
behavior to unsolicited e-mail, and that I would further ignore him.

 I only send mail to those people whom I am familiar with, or if I need
to send something to a totally unknown person, I at least make sure that
there is a productive and useful purpose to it.

 Any other use of mail is not appropriate.

This has happened to me too.  I ignored the mail, but I felt a little guilty
about it.

I would reply.  I love getting mail, and I would figure that whoever sent it is
looking for a "e-penpal".  Not a problem for me.

If it was mail trying to solicit, or a religious tract or someting, I might
mail back saying I don't like getting that kind of mail.  But I would
definitely respond.

I got exactly the same mail, with exactly the same wording.  I assume you
got this on M-Net, because that's where it was sent from when I got it (my
mail on M-Net is forwarded to Grex, so I actually received it here). 
Normally I will reply to mail like that and often have quite interesting
conversations resulting from it, but the circumstances usually indicate me
having said something they found interesting, or maybe from somebody I was
in party with for a few minutes.  In this case it was not one of those
circumstances, and as I was dealing with a ton of mail from Grex having
been down for a day (which was why I was on M-Net), I deleted it so I
could get to the stuff from people I knew.

(mail seems like a safe and unobtrusive way to get to meet someone.)

(I might respond to it. I guess that makes me a "depends".)

This response has been erased.

I didn't save the message, and I'm not sure when I got it, so I'm not
sure, but I think I was on M-Net at the time it was sent.  Were the rest
of you on M-Net when it was sent, or was this person actually using some
other method than just sending a message to people he noticed logged in? 
It does seem strange taht he would use the same, not particularly well
written, message for every case even sending it at different times.

FWIW, I think we may be experiencing more of a case of culture shock than
an inconsiderate user.  One of the things I find very annoying about M-Net
is that there seems to be a much greater number of people who just chat
random people looking for a conversation about nothing in particular.  It
usually seems to me to be a rude interuption for the sort of thing that
could be done far better in party, but I can also see another side of the
issue where it could be considered incrediblly friendly.  Doing it in mail
rather than with chat could just be this user's way of trying to be
friendly without interrupting people.  The only question this leaves is
why he did it to so many people.

This response has been erased.

I remember that it was a login that should have been easy to remember, but
I don't remember it and this was one of the few messages that I didn't
save.  Did anybody save it?

(the login ID is knutz. Stefanie got the same message from him, and she
hadn't been on M-Net for a week. I'll ask her if she can forward the mail.)

Maybe now's the time to ask whether there's anybody with an M-Net account
who didn't get this message.  Could he have mailed it to everybody in the
password file, or something like that?

It sure sounds like it.  I don't know for sure, but I think it had been
about a week since I was on.  (And I had to go through newuser, at that;
I got purged.  Could never get through.)

i'm on m-net (logged intwice) and haven't been on in a week.  i'll check
and let you know.

(if you put a file in your home directory over there called .forward
saying "dang@cyberspace.org" (without the quotes), any mail you get there
will be forwarded to Grex.

In fact, I assume, your mail will go to a user named "dang" on Grex.  If
anyone reading this is *not* named dang, they probably shouldn't do that. :)

thanx.  is telnet down?  i tried to telnet to arbornet.org, and it said
that address didn't exist.

(instead, your .forward file should read "yagi@cyberspace.org", w/o the 
quotes.)

(sorry. couldn't be resisted.)

 :) :) :)

I'm not sure what telnetting to arbornet.org will do, but
m-net148.arbornet.org should work.  I think I just saw carson mention in
Agora that M-Net's Merit connection is down, and straight arbornet.org
might send you through that rather than through Msen.

I just scanned through the M-Net general conference, and the only mentions
of knutz I found were talking about a conference, and none of the mentions
of mail seemed to be in the right context.

well, the telnet worked, and i got thrugh, and guess what?  i had that
message too.  wonder what's up?

Hm, I got the message from knutz too.  I must've sent a reply of some
sort, because I got followup mail from the same id thanking me for
replying.  He also said that he'd stored all replies that he'd
received in a publicly readable file in his home directory.  But
I got a "No such file or directory" message when I tried to access
the file.

This may turn out to be one of the great unsolved mysteries, like the
location of the elephant graveyard and the collapse of Mayan civilization.
My best guess though is that it was somebody experimenting with Unix
programming, running a background task that automatically sends mail to
a person when they log in, i.e. nothing sinister.

Re the general question raised in #0:  On systems like Grex and M-Net
that are designed to foster communication, I certainly don't regard
unsolicited mail with innocuous content from someone I don't know as
anything out-of-line at all.  Unless I'm busy and in a hurry, I usually
reply.

As to unsolicited mail....I am a great culprit!  I have mailed to
people just because I liked their names.  I am a newbie! Well,
sort of...   I agree wtih Brenda.  e-mail pen pals
can be fun.....I think I will go m her right now.!

Mail them a formal reply and keep an electronic and hard copy

reply with the following message: "Hey! sorry I haven't written in awhile.
I've been spending a lot of time down at the blood bank, donating plasma for
my pet duck."

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